Sunday, June 29, 2008

N is for Nantucket

NnantucketI’ve never been to Nantucket, but envision it as a place firmly rooted in its own complicated history. Which means I do definitely want to go there. The subject of this letter “N” is not so much Nantucket the island as it is Nantucket—New England—Needlework. And perhaps the image has hinted at the subject that underlies the others: American samplers. Letterforms, pens, needles, fiber, tradition—all come beautifully together in samplers, embroidered cloths that demonstrate skill in needlework, especially in stitching alphabets. So my letter N is a small project knit in the style of needle-stitched samplers. Although knitting and embroidery (especially cross-stitch) have much in common, they seem to operate at different scales and with different fundamental concerns. While knitting is architectural, mathematical, constructive, embroidery is fine, without visible guidelines, ornamental. I wanted to explore their common features and celebrate two time-honored forms of needlework and penmanship.

Sampler3Although girls stitched samplers in America as early as the mid-seventeenth century (the oldest surviving example is by Myles Standish’s daughter, Loara, ca. 1653, now in the Pilgrim Hall Museum; reproduction kit by the Examplarery here), I associate them with the early Republic era, roughly 1790 to 1811. By that time, Nantucket was firmly established as a major commercial center, a situation the robust Quaker community on the island was largely responsible for bringing about. (Right: Polly Coffin’s sampler, Nantucket Historical Association, 1797)

Sampler4Today, Nantucket Island is known as a vacation destination for the wealthy, where exquisite baskets are made and sold for very respectable sums. Herman Melville helped enshrine the island as the control center for a global whaling empire through Moby Dick. Melville’s first mate was Starbuck, and although his name is immortalized on coffee shop signs around the world, it was also a prominent Nantucket Quaker name. (At left: Sally Starbuck’s sampler, 1808, Nantucket Historical Association)

NinkAlthough I tend to think of samplers as American, they are not, of course. Samplers were made all over Europe —particularly in Spain and England— for centuries before the Mayflower brought Myles Standish to this continent. Initially, needlework samplers were, like knitting samplers, containers of information— catalogs of stitches. As written messages began to appear as a standard element, it was clear that this medium had become a gentile occupation for privileged women. Only the wealthy could afford to teach girls to read and write.

Sampler6From at least the time of the American Revolution, needlework samplers were an established feature of curricula in schools that accepted female students, where students generally completed their samplers between the ages of 7 and 14. Independent teachers of young women (almost always women themselves) also taught needlework to their young charges. The sampler, whether assigned in a classroom or by a tutor, was meant to teach young girls how to form letters as well as to sew. Many students found that needlework was the easier skill to master. Ornate or very plain, samplers were not meant to be canvases for artistic prowess; the format, elements, even sometimes the messages, were all carefully prescribed by instructors. The sampler—at first a demonstration of wealth and privilege—became a mark of literacy, specifically of female literacy. The finished sampler came to be regarded as a relic from a rite of passage, a mark of learning, and in later years, a family heirloom. (Above, left: Hope Mosely’s sampler, 1804. Private collection)

Sampler2In addition to one or more alphabets, a sampler might also feature a poem or truism, as well as the student’s name, date and place of birth (or at least age at the time of “writing”), sometimes the names of family members, a school or teacher’s name, and a variety of motifs (including, often, school buildings, such as Harvard Yard, where ironically, female students were not welcome). I was astonished to learn that the National Archives holds a small collection of samplers. Apparently they were accepted as genealogical evidence. When widows applied for their late husbands’ military pensions, they had to prove their own birth date and name, and some had no other evidence to provide. There’s a great article by archivist Jennifer Davis Heaps about samplers as genealogical evidence here. We can expect more on samplers & genealogy from the Winterthur conference this October. (Hannah Foster’s sampler, 179x. New Hampshire Historical Society)

Sampler5The strong Quaker presence in Nantucket from the late eighteenth-century and continuing for about a hundred years assured that young women were educated. Enough samplers survive to demonstrate styles set by Nantucket educators. In general, the heyday of Nantucket samplers (say, from about 1790 until about 1815) produced samplers that emphasize letters rather than pictures, messages more than motifs. The one recurring motif, the Nantucket tree, seems to have represented some kind of a pine tree, and appears across the bottom row of Mary Starbuck’s sampler (1796, left; Nantucket Historical Association).


NSamplerMy own attempt to make a knitted sampler has turned out a bit disappointing, so I won’t be framing it or sending it to the local historical society or to the National Archives. I tried to use materials that corresponded in some way to the samplers of two-hundred years ago: a linen base with bits of color (too much color, I think) in cotton and silk and even some metallic threads. I used a very stiff, barely processed & spun linen (with a mean, insistent twist) for the main color, with bits of more reasonable linen, embroidery thread and silk/cotton yarns. Because I wanted a fair amount of definition, I knit at a gauge of about 8 stitches to the inch. It was a delight to pick out the materials, but when it came time to knit, I spent more time untangling yarn than I did knitting. Knitting with two or more yarns, each in a different fiber, each with its own ideas about how to behave, was a vexing challenge. Luckily, linen relaxes considerably after blocking, so the result is better than I had expected. My message, which is probably hard to make out, is:
Union Pearl / Markt This / Sam[N]ple / r 6 mo* / 2008
[row of Nantucket trees]

* “6 mo.” is the Quaker term for the month of June.
Often, written messages continued from line to line, whether or not the word or sentence broke in the right place, which is why the word, “sampler” stetches from one “row” to the next. Borders are moss stitch, which flattens out after blocking to look like basketweave, also a reference to Nantucket.

Before BlockingAfter Blocking
NSampler2Nnatucket2



Sampler1Some Nantucket & Needlework Resources
  • Sherri Federbush, “Journal of Eliza Brock” Historic Nantucket (July 1982): 13-17.
  • Julia Fein Azoulay, “Reading into History: Susan Boardman’s Nantucket Embroidered Narratives” Piecework (July/August 2004): 34.
  • Elizabeth Shure, “Waiting, Working Women of Nantucket Island” Piecework July August 95: 40.
  • Carpenter, Charles H., Jr., and Carpenter, Mary Grace. The Decorative Arts and Crafts of Nantucket (New York: Dodd, Meand & Co., 1987).
  • Sturgis Library (Nantucket) Archives
InksSampler Bib
  • Swan, Susan Burrows. Plain and Fancy: American Women and Their Needlework, 1650 - 1850
  • Ring, Betty. Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650 - 1850, 2 vols. (1993)
  • Kathleen Staples, “Fancy samplers of New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts, 1805-1835” Magazine Antiques (Feb. 2008)

  • Frances Faile, “ Caring for Old Samplers” Piecework (Nov. 1993): 12-13.

Nink2Examples of samplers on the WebUpcoming Conference
Who’s Your Daddy? Families in Early American Needlework
Winterthur Needlework Conference
Winterthur Museum & Gardens, Winterthur, Delaware

NSampler3Just for fun

Sunday, June 8, 2008

M is for Mantinia

mantiniamMantinia is an electronic font. Never existed in metal. Existed in stone and paint, but never in metal (unless retrospectively). It was, in short, born digital. Typographer Matthew Carter designed Mantinia as a tribute to the Paduan painter and printmaker, Andrea Mantegna (1430/31-1506). Mantega for his part was a passionate antiquarian, which in the fifteenth century meant that he was fascinated with imperial Roman architecture, history, and . . . inscriptions.

Mantegna
Mantegna was from Padua, where he was privileged to study at the city’s renowned university (founded 1222), but he spent most of his career in Mantua. His panels, murals and prints all display his interest in classical themes, architectural styles and motifs. He is probably best remembered for his painting of the dead Christ, seen in forced perspective from foot level. A great example of his painted inscriptions can be found in his series, Triumphs of Caesar, which Charles I acquired for the British royal collection. The series now lives at Hampton Court Palace. (At right: Mantegna exhibition poster, 2006-2007).

This (at left) is the second segment of Triumphs of Caesar (1484-92) and the detail depicts standard bearers in a triumph, or military procession (complete with vanquished foes and booty), honoring Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. As a humanist, Mantegna took great interest in classical forms, and his focus on Roman letterforms displays a fine taste for the most refined Roman inscriptions. As a proper Renaissance artist, he was very much concerned with the task of resurrecting interest in Classical forms (including letterforms) from architectural sources, rather than from Gothic textual scripts that were more prevalent in manuscripts of the fifteenth century. He was particularly interested in the initial letters, opening verse or inscriptions with a bold design statement and setting the tone for the text to follow.

On the five-hundredth anniversary of Mantegna’s death in 2006, Mantegna’s three cities (Padua, Verona, Mantua) each hosted exhibitions of the artist’s work. Fittingly, the advertisement text was set in Matthew Carter’s Mantinia. A large, three-dimension letter “M” (set in Mantinia, naturalmente) was erected outside each venue (and stood about six feet high and pictured at right in Damiano Daresta’s exquisite photo). Also stenciled on the streets of Mantua as breadcrumbs, leading visitors to the three exhibition sites, were red Mantinia Ms.

Image: “Mantova Metafisica” by Damiano Daresta (K551 Jupiter on Flickr)
Taken on November 12, 2006, at the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua
Used with permission.
Do not reproduce without first obtaining permission from the photographer.

Matthew Carter designed Mantinia in 1993 as a titling font, which means that it was meant to function like, well, an Imperial Roman inscription: bold statements, full of weight and power. Mantinia is an all-capital font. Carter is quite the erudite typographer, and the pamphlet he designed to accompany and demonstrate the intricate possibilities of the Mantinia font is rife with his own scholarship on Mantegna’s antiquarianisms. He also designed the lovely font, Galliard (for which he is probably best known). Its italic and Mantinia complement one another beautifully. He designed a number of alternate characters, raised capitals, tall capitals, ligatures, and even ornaments for Mantinia that give the type designer a whole range of juicy possibilities. Some of his other type designs include: Snell Roundhand, Georgia (which you are reading now, unless your browser has made a substitution), and Sofia.

didyma_mI’ve created my own red Mantinia M, this one in yarn. For now, it’s another letter in my knitted abecedarium, but I’m saving it as an idea for a bold statement later on. I have, however, used Mantinia letters in another project. I charted a few words to create, well, let’s call it a name tag, on the inside rim of a hat. The original pattern comes from Adrian Bizilia of Hello Yarn. I used her brilliant pattern, “We Call Them Pirates,” but substituted ampersands for skull & crossbones. The pattern is incredibly well knit_mantinia2conceived and an absolute joy to knit. I’ve now made it three times (but only once with ampersands). Adrian has designed a matching mitten set as well. As of this writing, Ravelry members have made the hat pattern 761 times, which is a measure of how wonderful a pattern it is! Download it for free from the Hello Yarn site. Here is my chart for the ampersand variation of Adrian’s “Pirates” design.

Carter & Mantinia Bib